If you ask a designer (at least girl designers) what they enjoy designing most, most of them will say wedding invitations. Just ask a designer you know. For me, I like designing them because it's print (I love print design), I get an excuse to do something a little more formal, the wording is already laid out for me (I'm terrible with creative text) and it's a great way to get my creative juices flowing. A couple months ago, my engaged cousin asked me if I'd design their wedding invitations, of course I was just thrilled to. I had a lot of fun working on these, and I'm so excited to share the design with you. Chris & Cesia have a lot of family and friends; they printed and sent out 700 invitations. 700! So of course the cost of printing was definitely something to we had to consider. While brainstorming and discussing the design, they decided that they really liked the invitations I designed for my own wedding nearly four years ago. I feel like I've grown a lot since designing those, but it is flattering that someone liked the design I did so long ago! Here's a little bit of info about the creative process and the invitations themselves:

• A10 Envelopes & Invitation - I formatted the invitations to fit A10 envelopes; they are very inexpensive and you can find them in almost every color!
• Black and white digital printing - We kept the printing cheap, but used good-quality 110lb cream uncoated cover so it didn't feel cheap.
• Custom Stamp - Getting this custom stamp made cost about $35, and added a whole lot of color and variety to the invitations. This is also a great way to add a touch of your wedding to anything (i.e. favors, envelopes, centerpieces, thank yous, place cards, etc)!
• Sewn Invitation - This added a bit of variety and structure to the invite and kept the invitation and photo together. Additionally, it allowed us to include and hide registry information.
• Photograph - While I don't shoot engagements, I did take theirs. They were so easy to photograph! It was really nice to have full control of the quality and styling of the photograph.
• Fonts - I used Quicksand for the invitation text and my own handwriting for their names.

There you have it. Chris & Cesia were SO incredibly easy going and fun to work with on these invitations. Now I've got to work on getting the rest of my cousins married. ;)